Software Developer

King's Cross, Central London

Posted: 16/04/2019

Closes: 16/05/2019

Hours:Full time

Contract:Permanent

The Guardian is one of the world’s biggest liberal news organisations. We are renowned for our ground-breaking independent journalism, our award-winning digital products and excellent engineering team.

Development of digital products is central to the Guardian. You could be building the products that showcase our progressive and independent journalism, crafting the tools that journalists use to write their stories, developing the services that allow those stories to be distributed across the globe, or safeguarding our financial future.

What you’ll be doing

You’ll mostly be programming in Scala, running in AWS, but we use the tool that best fits the problem.

You’ll be working in a cross-functional team, which is empowered to rapidly iterate and release new features.

You won’t be coding in isolation - our culture is strongly collaborative, whether pair programming with other developers or working closely with editorial and commercial colleagues.

Sometimes deciding what code to write is as hard as writing the code itself. As an engineer you’ll be involved in product decisions as well as technical ones.

You’ll be encouraged to grow - we support moving between teams and roles in order to learn new skills and technologies in whatever direction you choose.

Much of our code is openly available on GitHub, and some of our projects are widely used throughout the Open Source community. Many of our developers regularly attend and present at conferences. Please visit our Guardian Developers site and the Guardian Developer blog for more information about working in the Digital Development team.

About You

As a server side engineer, you’ll be equally willing to dive into a purely functional and compostable Scala back-end or work with a variety of database and streaming technologies. You won’t necessarily be an expert in everything, but you’ll be eager to learn.

You are a creative, passionate, and intelligent person who loves web technologies.

You are excited by the opportunity to shape the future of digital journalism.

Your interests go beyond just your team’s objectives; you are curious about where the organisation is moving as a whole.

You have a strong interest in growing your skills.

You can make reasoned choices regarding what technologies to use and when to use them.

We believe diversity of people, backgrounds, experience and ideas helps us to build better products and achieve more. We welcome applicants who have taken traditional and non-traditional career paths into software development.

What we offer

Flexible working; for example compressed hours, part-time working and working from home

Generous pension scheme; if you contribute 5% then the Guardian will contribute 8-12% (depending on your age)

Health insurance and dental scheme

26 days annual leave and the option to purchase an extra 5 days

Up to 18 weeks of parental leave at full pay

Cycle to work scheme and subsidised gym membership

Paid volunteering days

Annual season ticket loan

We strive for transparency in remuneration. The salary for new developers at the Guardian is £48k.

We welcome applicants with diverse backgrounds, different lived experiences and different perspectives. A diverse team means we can better reflect and engage our global audience.

We believe in hiring the best people from the widest pool, and also in including them, fostering a culture where people’s voices can be heard and our employees look forward to coming to work.

Application Instructions

To apply for this position you must already have the right to work in the UK.

Please upload your CV and covering letter as one document. You should also highlight the extent to which your skills/experience meets the requirements of the role and your motivation behind applying.

Our interview process involves three stages: a phone interview, a pairing test and a face to face interview. We offer a remote pairing test for candidates who would have to travel a long distance to our office in London. If you are successful in the phone interview and remote pairing test you will then need you to arrange to come to our office for a further pairing test and a face to face interview.

We value and respect all differences in all people (seen and unseen) at the Guardian. We aspire to inclusive working experiences and an environment that reflects the audience we serve, where our people have equal access to career development opportunities, their voices are heard and can contribute to our future. The Guardian actively encourages applications from BAME candidates.

At the Guardian, many of our staff work flexibly and we will consider all requests for flexible working arrangements.

Guardian News & Media (GNM) publishes theguardian.com, one of the largest English-speaking quality newspaper websites in the world. Since launching US and Australian digital editions in 2011 and 2013 respectively, traffic from outside of the UK now represents over two-thirds of the Guardian's total digital audience.

In the UK, GNM publishes the Guardian newspaper six days a week, first published in 1821, and the world's oldest Sunday newspaper, The Observer.

GNM is the core business of Guardian Media Group (GMG), whose sole shareholder is The Scott Trust Ltd. The core purpose of The Scott Trust is to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity.

Every person - and every organisation - is unique. We all have different goals at work. At Guardian Jobs, we bring together like-minded job seekers and employers to create a happier world of work for everyone.